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Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

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Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#101

Post by BiteCode_dev »

SwellJoe wrote: post #98
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is a scourge of a company. You literally work for a guy who, talking about the user data he dubiously acquired, that said "they trust me, dumb fucks". It's hard to feel sorry for workers who chose that road, the writing was on the wall. And to be very well paid to create the biggest spying tech on the planet, making doomscroll addictive, ads that serve scams, AI slop everywhere, and being accused of having parti…

A dumb thing Zuck said when he was in college pales in comparison to the horrible stuff he's enabled as a fully formed adult who should know better.

Yes.

But there are things you say as a young person that are revealing of core personality traits.

Most people would just not say that.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#102

Post by jackmott42 »

glaslong wrote: post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Why does anyone want to work for companies run by such awful people in the first place? I saw me CEO make up a whole new persona to suck up the new nazi administration I would be gone the next day.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#103

Post by glaslong »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #95
glaslong wrote: post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Meta is a scourge of a company. You literally work for a guy who, talking about the user data he dubiously acquired, that said "they trust me, dumb fucks". It's hard to feel sorry for workers who chose that road, the writing was on the wall. And to be very well paid to create the biggest spying tech on the planet, making doomscroll addictive, ads that serve scams, AI slop everywhere, and being accused of having parti…

Believe it or not, I agree. I don't sleep particularly great, but I went in clear eyed that in the worst case I'd be helping a company that should not own "the next platform" attempt to do exactly that.

But in the best case, I'd be working in a low ROI area -- actively draining money from the parts of the company that are most malicious -- primarily ensuring that assembly lines and skills at Goertek stay hot to carry the XR devices I'm passionate about through a nadir in the broader industry's investment. A mercenary agreement for the company and myself to both advance our goals.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#104

Post by rybosworld »

The pendulum swings.

Right now, layoffs are cool. It boosts earnings. And the current sentiment is that new ideas and projects are risky unless they involve shoving the square-shaped-AI into the circle-shaped-hole.

The thing that bothers me the most is that the people making these decisions are "winning" regardless of the outcomes. I can't remember a time where the industry was so overtly like this (i.e., the outcomes don't really matter). Perhaps the dotcom-era but I wasn't working in tech yet.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#106

Post by postexitus »

bradlys wrote: post #80
postexitus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not replacing anybody with AI. Meta has been a bloated hell hole for a very long time now (maybe 10+ years). Nothing, literally nothing beyond Ads and AdTech makes a dent in their earnings. The complaints here - it's not only the "recently toxic environment"; I remember a conversation I had with a Meta SWE in 2019; he said "If I stop doing anything right now, my manager would not realize for at least 6 month…

This is large ymmv. Most people would get fired for not shipping stuff regularly. Just because some engineers at a big company are able to skirt by without shipping doesn’t mean that’s the norm. The company has tens of thousands of people. There will be some variation but a lot of orgs are quite ruthless with their metrics.

Agreed - also things have changed a lot since 2019. Having said that, even people who ship and are rewarded for it do work on stuff that has very little impact on the bottom line. Except ads.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#107

Post by CodingJeebus »

ryandvm wrote: post #44

Tech company leadership gleefully replacing engineers with AI is going to be an incredibly short-lived era. I'll admit I was a little shocked at just how susceptible software engineering was to the brute force of LLMs, but man, wait until they find out just how easy it is for an LLM to do their jobs. This isn't stopping until it gets all the way up to the asset holders.

A big part of successful LLM-driven dev is caring about the quality of the output, and it's so easy to ship slop and not care in a low-morale environment.

I think execs are vastly underestimating the damage an apathetic engineering org armed with AI can do to their platform. The short-termism can (and I think will) come back around when they foster an angry culture with a huge token budget.

It reminds me of Woodstock '99, when in order to keep an angry, hungry and drunk crowd under control, the organizers planned a candlelight vigil for Columbine and gave the crowd real candles. That went over about as well as one might guess.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#108

Post by magicalist »

simpaticoder wrote: post #93
hsuduebc2 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The yes man culture must be pretty hard near him.

It's really hard to tell if an idea is bad without trying it out first. Zuck's runway was unusually long. And who knows? Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

> Maybe he should have stuck with it a while longer. We cannot say for certain that it would always have failed.

Well, their execution was also very expensive and yet garbage, which is crazy with how many insanely talented people they had to work on it at one point or the other. It seems pretty clear cut as executive failure.

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#109

Post by zachturn »

jackmott42 wrote: post #102
glaslong wrote: post #8

Currently at Meta. This place has always been a bit ruthless in the 8+ years I've been around to observe. But the article is accurate. Never seen people this universally fed up. I thought tech was too cushy for it to happen, but there's serious collective action posting out in the open all over the place. It's also never been more cutthroat, backstabby, scope-grabby, political, and uncertain. There seems to be a flyw…

Why does anyone want to work for companies run by such awful people in the first place? I saw me CEO make up a whole new persona to suck up the new nazi administration I would be gone the next day.

Have you heard of money?

Re: Meta's New Reality: Record High Profits. Record Low Morale

#110

Post by jerojero »

elorant wrote: post #91
bluecheese452 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the guy who tried to make the metaverse a thing. He has been out of touch for decades now.

He's also the guy who bought Instagram for $1bn and turned into a $70bn behemoth. If that's out of touch then I don't know what the opposite would be.

They bought out Instagram because it was shaping out to be a huge competitor, so I think that business would have grown to be a multibillion dollar one regardless.

It was definitely very smart to buy them out when they did.

I just think you're focusing on the wrong part.

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